Let them eat crooked cake!

Say goodbye to this horrible compost pile. I could never really turn it properly so that it would get cooking so we are going to move it and mix it with the mound of chicken poop to the left and make sure it heats up right so I can finally use it. Then I am going to only compost the chicken poop with the bedding (near the coup, novel idea I know) and give kitchen scraps to the worm bin that is in the works. All that will be left to do is plant some grass in its place. Good riddance. The feral cats and raccoons are going to be pretty pissed that their buffet is leaving. You can see molly sneaking behind the pile, she came limping back out from it with a nice pine needle stuck in her foot.

Heres a funny pic of one of the girls squatting and foot stomping for me. If you give them a couple good firm pats on the back it seems to make them happy.

And here they are eating all the worms I worked hard to get into the garden. It was a buffet, they were sucking the worms down like spaghetti. 

Me and miss hanger-on went for a good walk one day when it was nice and sunny. We walked past our neighbors the horses, she used to want to sniff them when she was little but now they just scared her. She wouldn't look at them, just sat with her head pointed towards the road. They must just look like really big dogs to her?

So I did a bonehead thing the other day. I opened the baggies of sprouts in the greenhouse and forgot about them. When I went out in the morning, after they had been in the heat and under the lights all night, they were bone dry and all shriveled up. So I had to buy new and start over on the peppers, eggplant and rosemary. Heres to second tries. 

It was my mom and brothers birthday last week so I made a cake and everyone came over. At the last minute I decided I should try to make this cake look better than just plain old icing. This is how that turned out. It leaned a bit to one side, but thats cause I was too lazy to make each layer level before I stuck them all together, no one cared though so that worked out. Next time i'm going to use that to my advantage and make a mad hatter style cake. 

And a little while later...

We said goodbye to the scarecrow, he worked a while last fall until his legs started to fall off and Mabel made off with them. It looks very sad but no one cried.

Oh my, heres a good one. Today I finally sprayed the window and made a curtain in the bathroom. Now the bath has only been finished for almost a year, but for some reason it didn't bother me to leave a folded curtain smashed into the top window as a nice ghetto window treatment. Those days are over now! woot!

In the first pic you can see how I left the top unfrosted so it would let in more light.

In other project news I have a couple sewing things to get done. First is an easy pillow that I want to cover to give to mom. I wanted it to be a birthday gift but that super fancy cake held me up on sunday. I got 4 yards of different fabrics in key west at this cool shop that had really wild bright prints. Mom mentioned she liked this one when I showed them to her so I figured a pillow would be nice and functional.

And this puppy is going to be awesome. I found a great shop on Etsy (Studio Cherie) that sells patterns, this one if for a large duffle that I plan on using when we go to florida in july. The second pic is from her page that shows a couple finished bags. It took me ages to pick out the fabric to use. The larger piece is the main fabric and the butterfly will be the strap. 

And as our conclusion this week I give you dirt dog, this is what she has looked like after spending a whole day in our yard/swamp. And you know her mind is on our bed, if you don't direct her straight downstairs to the shower its an automatic 2 load laundry evening. But thats only if you don't mind sleeping on muddy paw prints.

Look what was under all that snow....

Lots of pictures today. I let the ladies out around 7 o'clock to frolic in the grass.

Heres todays haul, there was remnants of another blue egg all over the other ones,  it didn't make the stampede evidently. 

A few of the girls set up shop under the bird feeder like it was a buffet.

Somebody seen from afar and she came sprinting towards the group.

Here are how the tomatoes are going.

Leeks and onions.

This is how I have the tomatoes heated in the evening, I have the heater under the bench with some of the slats taken out so the heat can come up through. I wrap up the lights and keep it all enclosed so the heat stays in good.

Franke needed a good head scratching before I left. And when I did, there was a full blown party happening at the bird feeder.

Look at the buds on the forsythia, I can't wait to see it bloom. My tulips and daffodils are shooting up also, and the hyacinth look like artichoke coming out of th ground.

And heres the best part of the day, husband put my nice wheels back on my car, that means we are swearing off the snow and salt until next december!

Repairs and a bit of spring weather

We took a walk on the rail trail on Friday, it was about 65 degrees with a nice breeze. This yard was right on the trail and as we were coming up to it you could see a blanket of purple.

 

I made a quick make-shift area for the chickens to hang in that wasn't wet, and to keep them out of the run while we redid the roof. (Will post pics of that soon). I'm pretty sure they were enjoying the green grass snacks. And Mabel was enjoying the treats the chickens left behind, yuck. This time we used chicken wire, hopefully this will leave bigger holes that the snow will fall through next winter instead of sit on. We shall see. 

My fantastic husband made me a broadfork this week! This tool retails for like 200 bucks, which is way too much for me to be spending hence the asking of the husband for favors. You use this in your beds to loosen the soil and mix in organic matter that you add to the top. It's better than using a tiller every year because you aren't smashing all the worms that you work so hard to get into your soil. 

I used a tiller the first year to establish the beds, and I actually double dug a couple. I started with the double digging and quickly found that I would rather do just about anything on the planet than that. I was actually seriously thinking about how much I would have to pay someone to finish them. I read about double digging in John Seymours' book 'The guide to self sufficiency', which is most fantastic, that is why I thought that I just had to do it that way.... Then we bought a tiller to finished up. Anyways, with the broadfork you stick the tines into the soil and then step on the rail and rock it back a little bit just to loosen things up and get things mixed in. I can't wait to try it out. 

Here's a pic that shows how we added on to the coup in the fall. I painted it green because I had it on hand and needed to get something on it before it rained, I planned to decide what to do with it over winter so I could paint in the spring. Well here its almost spring and i'm still not sure what I want to do. I was thinking just to paint it white and windows black to match the original portion, but now I am wanting to paint the whole thing a different color, only problem is that I will have to paint the siding. You can get Behr ultra that has the primer built in and you can use it on siding, i'm just not so sure if I want to try that or not. I'm afraid that it will flake off. The ghetto bags of leaves leaning against the coup were for winter insulation to keep the nasty wind from blowing underneath.

I moved most of the tomato sprouts out of their baggies and into the flats. They hadn't all sprouted so I will have to plant those late comers within the next few days. Then I moved the baby flats into the greenhouse, I have a space heater under the bench and wrapped plastic up over the flats and the lights to keep the heat in. Last year I had this whole setup in the kitchen, with the peeps in a huge cardboard box, you know, where the dirt bike was at, I guess we like having weird crap in our kitchen. I wish I had a baby wood burner in my greenhouse, I have seen that in some setups. That would be cool and cheap! 

Here are some of the ladies, they were all interested in the laces of my sandals, they must have been setting off their worm radar.

When I get up in the morning and husband is sleeping in this is what happens to my side. Rough life she has.